#rewrite article

[yourstrulynameless]

Look at these FREAKS

Original sketch :3

[britishchick09]

i found this national geographic at goodwill and wondered if it had the palais garnier water cellar in it...

i'm pleased to report that it does! ;D

[glasswingowl]

caught in your own web, just like your mother

[good-fwiend-in-wome]

you know what it's 2023 and I'm done arguing. next time someone goes "oh man scp used to be cool and scary but now LONG and YOU SOMETIMES NEED TO KNOW STUFF ABOUT THE SETTING like oh no what happened to the good ol days of spooky monster men that kill you that was peak horror" I'm just gonna explode them

[shoechoe]

in my opinion scp 049 was really always a Fine article, it just got a shit ton of hate because it was so popular and there were fangirls for it (no disrespect to the fangirls)

i will say i think his voice actor was severely overrated. people just found a guy whispering through a mask hot

[descendantofthesparrow]

-Hades Ember by Milo Thatch-

=

Hades Ember; is a small blue gem that glows like fire or a lost soul, its origins are unknown to those who are not within the personal circle of lord Hades; god of the underworld and souls.

Origins; its beginnings are unknown to Auradon and its people-including its now ex-king; Adam/Beast. But it’s rumored by those of the isle that the ember was created by Hades as a last-ditch effort to keep his powers, only to fail and the ember remained dormant until magic began to leak through the magical barrier around the isle of the lost. If one asked Hades-he would say he always had it.

It is unknown if the kingdom of Auradon and its royalty know of its existence. However-there is no files or recordings of the Ember before the August 2019 “scepter” incident, so it is theorized that the ember was only known to the isle and its people.

According to Hades and Lady Mal; the ember can only be used by those who share blood with hades, are claimed by Hades, or are born with the mark of hades. After acquiring the Ember, Lady Mal was able to use some of her father's powers while holding the Ember-but reported she lost those powers when not in possession of the Ember. Some side effects she reported were her outfit colors and hair color shifting to hold more blue instead of her mother's purple.

Its power is unknown but suggested to be immense since it apparently can overpower the dragon's eye scepter-Maleficents scepter, which until the emergence of the Ember, was only to be defeated by Fairy Godmothers' wand. One would think this ember would be sought after and hoarded by those who seek power-but since the ember cannot be used by those who do not share Hades blood or blessing-it is deemed useless by those who wish to horde such powers.

Its apparent powers are beams of light that feel like fire(according to lady mal) that can drain one of energy or magic to power the ember further. It can give one the powers of Hades, such as super strength, immunity to death, clairvoyance, soul manipulation, seeing the strings of fate and life, Pyrokinesis, super speed, enhanced reflexes, and the ability to summon the hound of the underworld.

According to Lady Mal, only Hades can access the full powers of the Ember, since she-in Hades words-is only half Hades, the Ember cannot do everything for her that it does for him. So it is unknown of the full power of the Ember since Lord Hades does not seem to be willing to do tests for us researchers, but Lady Mal is perfectly willing to show off what she can do with the Ember, thankfully.

There are many things we do not know about Hades Ember, such as its origin(like how it possibly wasn’t created until Hades was arrested and sent to the isle in 1995) and why not even Zeus knew of the ember until recently.

It is a greatly mysterious item that could be akin to the trident of Poseidon or the lightning bolt of Zeus, though it is a wonder that it overwhelms the dragon's eye and the Fairy Godmother's wand.

[hunxi-after-hours]

hey, big fan of your blog! read some of your qianqiu metas, and was thinking lately about the presentation of the statist consolidation of power and framing of political unification as an unproblematic moral good in a lot of the wuxia/xianxia I've engaged with. having grown up with these genres, I know that censorship and sociopolitical circumstances are big influences on the message that gets put out. (1/3)

but also as an anti-authoritarian looking to art and literature for countercultural inspiration, I guess I've found a lot of wuxia lacking in a vision for a radical future. this certainly isn't to say that art needs to be radical to have value, or that wuxia spaces haven't created avenues of self-expression and joy for oppressed groups in an airtight society where there are dire risks attached to political activity. (2/3)

wuxia/xianxia are my favorite genres, but many aspects of its narratives seem to uphold structures of oppression (i.e. ableism, colorism, xenophobia, misogyny, etc). but hey, 嫌货人才是买货人, no such thing as perfect, best thing to do, I suppose, is to engage with art with a critical eye. thanks for your time! (3/3)

an anon after my own heart, hello! you're definitely getting at certain themes, assumptions, and values that in a way were built in to the wuxia genre as it has evolved today. whether you’re reading classic authors like 金庸 Jin Yong or remixers like 梦溪石 Meng Xishi, I’ve definitely noticed that wuxia as a genre has, well, complicated relationships with the structures of oppression that you brought up

(I'm leaving xianxia out of the discussion atm as I’m less familiar with it as a whole, but also I don't think it has the same concerns of nationalism and historicism that wuxia does)

in many ways, the modern wuxia genre is a heavily compensatory genre, which I mean specifically in a “hey, compensating much?” kind of way. it took me a very long time to realize and process this, diaspora kid that I am, but so much of contemporary Chinese culture is still profoundly affected by the events of the past 200-250 years. I mean, when you think about it, the imperial dynastic system wasn’t all that long ago; in many ways, Chinese society is still reeling from the century of humiliation, the breakneck industrialization, the mass deaths of the 20th century in war and famine and revolution and government abuse (there is also the matter of the government deliberately evoking public memory of past atrocities to fan nationalistic sentiment for its convenience, which not only keeps historical national humiliations top-of-mind but also disrupts processes of collective memory and collective grieving).

Stephen Teo, in Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition, tracks the origins of wuxia as a genre, and from the beginning wuxia has been bound up with anxieties over masculinity and national agency, which in literature can often be one and the same. Teo, in tracing early forerunners of wuxia and the historical context of its emergence, notes that "[i]ntellectuals initially regarded the warrior tradition in the genre as one of the elements that could provide a positive counterweight to China's image as the 'sick man of Asia'" (Teo 37).

Given the repeated incursions and invasions onto Chinese soil and China’s status as a semicolony for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it’s almost too obvious how the wuxia genre provides a balm for those exact anxieties: the martial warrior tradition (the 武 wu in 武侠 wuxia, if you will) directly addresses fears regarding the emasculation of Chinese men; the historical settings of wuxia novels often set during or against a backdrop of past imperial Chinese glories; the featuring of military triumphs over “foreign barbarians” who sought to invade or occupy imperial land, or even better — the protagonist, raised among the “wolfish barbarians,” is uniquely positioned to combine the “raw, savage strength” of “barbarian” culture with the “cultured civility” of Han Chinese culture; the strong emphasis on tradition(al aesthetics) and traditional Confucian ethics of morality and righteousness as contrast and counterpoint to the rapid modernization and Westernization of 20th/21st century Chinese culture... you get the idea

Teo’s book surveys the wuxia genre over the past century, particularly through film, and he discusses how wuxia in the 21st century begins “to manifest as made-in-China historicist blockbusters mixing the epic form with wuxia" — which is to say, wuxia has increasingly become intertwined with the genres of period dramas and historical epics:

"Having been grafted onto the period epic, wuxia becomes a showcase of Chinese history, seeking to be universally accepted while at the same time locating itself within the historicist confines of the nation-state." (168)

wuxia’s increasing hybridization/conflation with historical epics (particularly in Zhang Yimou’s 2002 film 《英雄》 Hero, John Woo’s 2008 - 2009 《赤壁》 Red Cliff duology) increasingly politicizes the genre, and that politicization thereby links wuxia to national issues of structural oppression, like the ones you mentioned: the statist consolidation of power and framing of political unification as an unproblematic moral good, ableism, colorism, xenophobia, misogyny... any one of these could carry a research paper on their own, and I don’t presume to be able to solve or explain away any of them in a tumblr post, but I do think there are many ways in which the wuxia genre’s (often uncritical) support of structures of oppression are directly linked to the origins of wuxia as a genre that was in many ways wish-fulfillment for a 20th/21st century Chinese culture wracked with political turmoil, economic disaster, and cultural uncertainties

I particularly like Teo’s discussion here:

"...The grand historicist self-fashioning of the genre in a film like Hero and its offshoots Curse of the Golden Flower, The Banquet, The Warlords [...and] Red Cliff demonstrate the kind of nationalistic self-aggrandisement that critics find so disturbing, particularly so when the nature of the regime is authoritarian and autocratic, ever ready to invoke militaristic power as the means to their end of a unitary nation state.

“However, if we see the wuxia genre as a mirror of the nation, it shows China in perpetual crisis, torn apart by internal strife and the urge to cohere as a unitary state." (186)

the framing of political unification as an unproblematic moral good is something I find particularly interesting, because a lot of that has to do with Chinese history. the famous opening line of 《三国演义》 / Romance of the Three Kingdoms references this directly: 天下大势，分久必合，合久必分 / “All great movements under heaven [follow this rule]: that which has fallen apart for a long time must come together, and that which has been together for a long time must fall apart.” The entire cyclical narrative of imperial China has been this: a dynasty rises, a dynasty falls, the land fractures into squabbling kingdoms, out of which a single dynasty eventually rises, to eventually fall, to eventually fracture again. and so, a dynasty’s collapse and the subsequent societal fracturing into warring territories is naturally paired with the crisis and violence that ensues with the fall of a state. simply put, there just isn’t a period of Chinese history (or if there is, I don’t know of it) where political fragmentation has not been associated with civil unrest; therefore political unification must be an unproblematic good as it eliminates domestic warfare and returns order to the central plains. handily, this supports the current regime’s nationalistic and authoritarian agenda, and so we see this particular moral value reflected in much of wuxia fiction

not to simply brush aside ableism, colorism, xenophobia, and misogyny all with a wave of a hand, but I do think that much of this has to do with contemporary Chinese society’s current attitudes towards these issues. when a society privileges pale complexions in its beauty standards (see: the triptych of 白富美, the omnipresence of beauty products that advertise skin tone lightening, the entire entertainment/idol industry), colorism is a natural (and shitty) result. government-spurred nationalism, historical racism, and Han chauvinism all contribute to the rampant xenophobia of much of Chinese media, especially when it comes to depictions of non-Chinese Asia (Central Asia, Japan, SE Asia in particular). when wuxia needs a faceless enemy, it reaches for the barbarians on the border. ableism and misogyny are issues that contemporary Chinese society struggle with now; the issue of ableism in particular feels stifled in the cutthroat nature of the current job market (the flipside of China’s massive labor force is the knowledge that every person is fundamentally replaceable), and the depths to which cultural misogyny runs in China is growing steadily more and more evident as the gender gap widens

and when it comes to fiction, when it comes to literature, widespread change often doesn’t occur until there is a societal call for it. I’m thinking of the U.S. science fiction and fantasy scene, which went through its own reckoning with diversity and genre-reified prejudice over the past decade and a half. and now we have brilliantly diverse authors and searingly postcolonial works, queer characters on the regular, Tor Books itself advertising to us soft sad queer freaks on tumblr. the journey wasn’t easy though, nor is the journey remotely close to over, but the fact remains — there was, in a sense, a collective cultural awakening about the ways in which more classic SF/F often utilized and reified racism, prejudice, misogyny, ableism; and subsequently, there was a conscious effort towards holding the genre(s) and its creators accountable, towards writing and supporting and amplifying voices previously shunned and silenced

and, well, to be fully honest, I don’t think that cultural moment has arrived yet for wuxia. this is not to say that there are no wuxia creators out there trying to decolonize the genre, but that we haven’t reached the turning point where decolonizing the genre and examining its history of misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and colorism is expected, accepted, even celebrated, and I don’t think we’ll get there until contemporary Chinese society goes through a cultural reckoning with these same issues

I also think it’s worth mentioning that whatever that collective cultural awakening/reckoning looks like, it must be and will be distinctively Chinese. Chinese culture maintains different moral values from Western (Euroamerican) culture; contemporary China faces different social issues and political problems than contemporary Euroamerica. whatever this journey looks like, I don’t think it will look like or should look the same as what the U.S. went through/is going through. decolonizing/deimperializing East Asia is inherently different from decolonizing/deimperializing the West, so I would like to stop short of making prescriptive statements on what that cultural turning point should look like

that being said: if anyone’s run into some good postcolonial wuxia lately, I’d be VERY interested to hear more about it

[gaytobymeres]

anyone on here know anything about copyright permissions for the british library? I'm struggling to navigate their website but I need to know how to get permission to use the roy military map in a journal article I'm writing

[kurtbrussels]

i bullshat the presentation half of my final report that i had all semester to work on. the moment it was due.

it was for the last class of the semester and i FUCKINH forgot. i picked a random topic off the top of my head and started reading off wikipedia ffnskfksnfk and the professor loved it....

now im suffering for it bc i have a day to write a 2,000 word essay on 'cool runnings'

[captainofthetidesbreath]

It is honestly maddening the fact that Fjord and Sabian grew up together, especially when you put it next to the fact that Fjord is so precious about the persons he was before.

He does not like talking about the versions of him that came before. These versions of himself are people he does not care to speak of nor ever introduce to people who did know them. He is so present tense, so oriented toward the future, so deeply rooted in change that he refuses to speak of what he has trimmed away. He does not talk about the person he was aboard the Tide's Breath to the Nein, and it is implied that he did not talk about the person he was before the ship to Vandran.

And then there is Sabian.

Sabian knew the Fjord who was a child in an orphanage, he knew the Fjord who worked at the docks, he knew the Fjord who sailed aboard the Tide's Breath. And, just the same, Fjord knew every version of Sabian that passed through those same years. Or, at least the person Sabian presented himself to be, given that Sabian is an enigma to him now. Perhaps, Sabian changed into something Fjord does not understand. (Perhaps they both did, in those final years.) Regardless—

Fjord and Sabian have witnessed each other through some truly harrowing times in their lives. To have seen one another terrorized and frightened, to have seen one another at the edge of desperation, perhaps to have seen each other through a disenfranchised anger that a child should never feel. Through sorrow, through hope, through fear, through rage, through joy, through desperation, through tedium, through defiance. Through change, through so much change.

That period in their lives that began when the ship sank is likely the first time ever they were not within an hour's reach of one another. For the first time, they are not a physically present fixture in the other's life.

Sabian and Fjord knew each other for many, many years. Decades of their lives. There is something wild in the fact that Sabian is the only person in the world to know who Fjord has been through it all, and Fjord of Sabian. The only people in the world who have witnessed this much of the other.

What does that level of knowing forge between two people, even those who cannot stand one another? What comes out of that long a relationship, near thirty years of presence? IS there a bond in that? Is there something emotional and intuitive that cannot be expressed in words but endures even through resentment and bitterness and anger and murder?

I wonder if there is something that exists only between them as people who have seen one another through it all, something that exists in spite of everything.

And, I wonder if that something between them—that weight of knowing all the people the other has been, that fact of both having changed so much since they saw the other last—is it capable of contrition and then capable of forgiveness? Is that longevity and all the things that it has witnessed enough for that?

I too often feel like I am thinking about Cain and Abel when I think about Sabian and Fjord. It's maddening.

[craftytimetravelbouquet]

Unleash Your Learning Potential: The Feynman Technique 🚀

Student life often comes with the challenge of grappling with complex concepts and information. The Feynman Technique, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, is a simple yet powerful method to master any subject, especially the trickiest ones. What is the Feynman Technique? The Feynman Technique comprises four straightforward steps:

Select a Concept: Pick the concept, topic, or subject you wish to master or study. It could be a tough textbook chapter, a complex theory, or a brand-new idea.

Teach It Simply: Imagine you're explaining the chosen concept to someone else—whether a friend, a family member, or an imaginary student. Use everyday language and real-life examples to make it as clear as possible.

Identify Gaps: While you explain the concept, you might stumble upon gaps in your knowledge or areas where you struggle to simplify it. These gaps highlight where you need to focus your learning efforts.

Review and Simplify: Return to your study materials (like textbooks, lecture notes, or online resources) to fill in those knowledge gaps and deepen your understanding. Keep breaking down complex ideas into simpler terms until you can explain the concept effortlessly. Why Does It Work? The Feynman Technique capitalizes on various effective learning principles:

Simplified Understanding: Teaching a complex topic in simple terms forces you to dissect it into its fundamental components. This clarifies your own understanding and ensures you grasp the concept at its core.

Identifying Gaps: When you struggle to explain a concept, it shines a light on areas of uncertainty or incomplete knowledge. This self-assessment guides your further study.

Active Engagement: Actively teaching and explaining a concept engages your brain far more effectively than passive reading or note-taking.

Repetition: Revisiting the concept multiple times during explanation and review phases reinforces your memory and understanding.

Effective Communication: Developing the ability to convey complex ideas in simple terms is a valuable skill that can enhance your academic and professional success.

How to Apply the Feynman Technique: Let's break down how to put the Feynman Technique into practice:

Select Your Topic: Choose a concept, theory, or subject that you find challenging or want to master.

Explain It to a Friend: Imagine you're teaching this topic to a friend with no prior knowledge of the subject. Use everyday language and real-world examples to make it accessible.

Identify Your Knowledge Gaps: As you explain, pay attention to areas where you struggle to simplify or clarify. These are your knowledge gaps.

Review Your Materials: Return to your study materials (textbooks, lecture notes, online resources) to fill in the gaps and deepen your understanding.

Repeat as Needed: Keep going until you can effortlessly teach the concept to your imaginary friend, using simple language and clear examples.

Test Yourself: To cement your understanding, test yourself by explaining the concept without looking at your notes or study materials.

[butchsophiewalten]

Added some more updates to The Walten Archives' FJW update walkthrough

If i'm remembering right, I think I'm only two updates behind now? And they're both just small updates to the main page, so great.

[chilewithcarnage]

mm you know what, I might just wait till September when the dvd set comes out cause everybody on spiderverse twit are posting clips talking about 'wait what happened to *x piece of dialogue' 'i thought he said this at this point why is it silent' and that there are apparently like 6 different versions of this movie with like either different/missing lines and effects at some parts. idk if I like that.

[rhombusboy]

I am so fucking SICK of my job